CONSUMERS: Close to Cloture

For only the third time in the past
half-century, the Senate last week went to a fourth cloture vote to
break a filibuster: the two-month-long rearguard action to keep a bill
creating a consumer protection agency from coming to a final vote on
the Senate floor. The cloture vote, 64 to 34, was two short of the 66
needed to end the filibuster, but proponents of the bill refused to let
it die. Convinced that they could muster two additional votes, they
asked Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield for an unprecedented fifth
try. If they can prove they have...